just wondering if my system is up to the task of mining and what i could expect. i'm a COMPLETE newb on this. just seen it mentioned on various forums whilst reading and thought i'd look into it. i was just curious as to whether or not mining would be beneficial to me in any way. key components of my rig consist of....

Normally the "Exchange Rate" value is autofilled in with whatever the current figure is, however Mt Gox suffered a database breach so you will have to manually input that value which according to a few of my mining pools is roughly $12.1

Then click calculate!

Remember the values are not set in stone! They could go up or down. But that should give you a rough guide! Hope this helps =)

You can see the next difficulty is estimated at 1114107 and should change later this week in 1082 blocks. You can divide the blocks till change by the current block / hour rate (9.49) to get the estimated hours until the change (114 hours / 4.75 days).

I like to do my short term calculations on the next difficulty, and I figure that would be a good average for the next month. Going back to the mining calculator, and putting in 1114107 nets a monthly return of $374.

Now, you also need to add in electricity costs. You can estimate it out by calculating the watts your video card uses (see mining comparison) and multiplying it by .72 to get the kilowatt-hours. Then you use your electricity rate to calculate your electricity costs (mine is 8.1 cents per kwh for comparison, I have heard of people with up to 15 cents per kwh).

If you want, you can also pad it a bit for cooling costs since the machine puts out a lot of heat. I recommend finding a good solution to minimize that. I have a thread with my setup, a fan with a garbage bag funneling the heat to a vent and out a window.

The other consideration is solo vs pool mining. If you solo mine, you won't get your first block for around 8 weeks (though it is completely random, could be first night). When you do, you'll get 50 BTC, worth about $1,000. With pool mining, you lose a couple pct and all transaction fees, but you get steady income. Unless you plan to get a lot more power, I'd recommend pooling.

Based on the current difficulty, the average is 64 days. I'm not great at statistics, and I don't understand the difference between 50% and average. I'd think the average would be 50th percentile, but whatever I'd rather underestimate than overestimate anyways.

thanks for all the replies. this definitely seems somewhat complicated. i'll try to read a bit more on it. i've considered getting a third 6950..... this rig is my desktop that i'm turning into my htpc, i suppose that would help out a bit more. how will mining affect the pc performance for every day tasks? i use to run fah and saw no noticeable affects.

The number of bitcoins generated every hour is a constant. The number of people mining is increasing, which drives up difficulty. This means that in time each miner will get less bitcoins per hour.At the current difficulty rate, it will take you about two months two solve a block and get your first 50 bitcoins. However, during these two months dificulty will probably go up again, so it will probably take you between two and three months to get your first 50 BTC.

There's also a luck factor in this. If you're lucky, you may solve a block in your first minute of mining (I wish you that!) If you're not lucky, it may take you much longer than two months. There's no way to estimate luck, so the time periods in the paragraph above are if you're "luck factor" is about average

At this time, mining is a dicey proposition. Depending on the BTC/USD exchange rate, you may make money (hopefuly) or may not be able to pay for the electricity needed to generate your first bitcoins. As a rule of thumb, when bitcoins are "expensive" it's better to mine. When they are "cheap" it's better to buy.

The number of bitcoins generated every hour is a constant. The number of people mining is increasing, which drives up difficulty. This means that in time each miner will get less bitcoins per hour.

While that is true now, and will continue to be true in the short term, I doubt it will be long term. Since there is a cost to producing a block, as the profit goes down miners will drop out. I expect mining difficulty to even out somewhere around 3,000,000 assuming the price remains around 20$ / BTC. Either way, supply and demand should be close. While the difficulty / price ratio is low, I say mine away, as fast as humanly possible. If it goes much above 3,000,000 then it'll be time to rethink mining profitability.

I see mining as a business, not just some random get rich quick scheme. As long as the margins are worth it, ie the difficulty / price ratio is under 160,000, I will let these systems mine away. Right now, it is under 50,000...

Also, regarding luck, joining a pool or adding significant amount of hardware takes luck out of the equation.

I know a few miners with LOTS of hardware which is already paid for, and with little or no electricity costs (at least THEY don't pay for it, someone else does )It may be that there are many miners out there in the same situation. OTOH, during the winter mining rigs are money-making heaters, which makes electricity costs less relevant if one lives in a cold area.Also, more miners seem to be getting into the mining business and many do not spend a lot of time with cost/benefit analysis IMHO, we will not see any difficulty stabilization unless the price of bitcoins goes really low.

Regarding the "luck factor", using a pool DOES NOT cancel it out, it just makes its variance a somewhat smoother. But, it comes at a price: usually the pool operator takes a commission.

ok, so i think im going to pull the trigger and setup a mining client. i see that there are some cpu clients as well as the gpu clients. should i even bother with a cpu client? also, what is the best client(s) that people are using.

Dont waste your time with cpu, will cost more in money then youll get.poclbm seems to be the best for me onces iv done the 5% and 2% speed incress mods found in this newbie section. And using flags -v -w 256